


Get Gone

by lowaters



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 23:25:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10056794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowaters/pseuds/lowaters
Summary: Cat left to dive. Kara tries to find her, and finds something she wishes she could forget.





	1. Chapter 1

Cat had been gone for three months.

Kara dreams, still, of the last time they spoke. Remembers how heavy her heart felt, how each beat felt weighted.

She wanted to say so much – knew, that with distance, her relationship with Cat would change forever. But everything she thought to say caught in her throat, and the pressure of confession pressed against her ribcage with such a ferocity that she felt dizzy.

She couldn’t tell Cat – not then. Her feelings were her own, and Cat didn’t need to be burdened with them on the outset of her journey. Not least because she might not return them.

But it had been three months, of hope, then hopelessness, as the older woman didn’t once reach out to her.

Kara knew pain – but she knew it as a child, as a teenager, and was never put through the ringer of adolescent crushes or heartbreaks, instead feeling the burden of a lost language, lost culture, lost planets, but not lost love.

And so this pain, something quite new, built up bitterly in Kara’s body.

She walked through the CatCo offices, and she couldn’t escape her. Her name, her face – her perfume seemed to settle in the air of the office, something James would never be able to eviscerate no matter how frequently he kept the balcony door open. Kara didn’t even know if it still smelt like her, really, or if this was another way to keep Cat here when Kara knew she should let go.

“Can we talk _now_?” Alex was sat by Kara at the bar, the first night in weeks that Alex had managed to convince her to hang out outside of one of their apartments.

“About what?” Kara responded, trying and failing to put up a presentable smile for Alex’s benefit.

“I don’t understand, Kara. Look, I want to help you, but I don’t know what to do. If your new job at CatCo isn’t as good as your last one, you can look somewhere else. You can work at the DEO, you know that.”

“It’s not about the job,” Kara replied quietly.

“What? What’s wrong then?”

“You don’t want to know, Alex. You _don’t,”_ Kara stressed, as Alex opened her mouth to protest. “So, please, can we just stay here and _not_ talk about it?”

“I…Kara…if this is about Cat-“

“I said _don’t_ Alex.”

“She didn’t even give you a second thought, Kara, you have to-“

Alex’s impassioned rant, and not the first one Kara had heard, was cut off by glass and ice turning to dust in Kara’s fist. Kara looked down, stunned at what her grip had done, before startling from her seat.

“I have to go.”

“Kara, please, don’t-“

“I’m sorry, Alex, I need to go.”

Kara pushed away from the bar, Alex’s helpless eyes following her as she took off for the alleyway, but Kara couldn’t focus on that.

She was _hurting._ And she couldn’t sleep without this stupid ache burying deep in her chest, this quiet longing that she could share with no one on this earth.

Clark wouldn’t understand. She knows this – knows, despite their similarities, he couldn’t understand why she would want someone like Cat. Someone who didn’t say her name correctly, someone old, someone burdened and careless with her. Someone cold.

And Alex would understand less. For all her love and knowledge of Kara, she wouldn’t accept this. Knew without asking that Alex thought Cat cruel. Thought her methods irregular at best and damaging at worst.

All she wanted was for someone to know. For someone to see Cat as she saw her – this beautiful woman, who had climbed from ashes, climbed out while people tried to bury her. Someone strong, who had raised someone as good and kind as Carter. Wanted someone to see how much Cat meant to her – how Kara could promise Cat to keep her safe because she knew there was no other option in this universe than for Cat to be safe. How Kara watched planets explode beneath her eyelids at night, and Cat’s warmth, her grace, made her strong enough in the day to sleep at night.

Kara wanted someone to know, yes. But she _needed_ Cat to know.

\---

Kara looked at herself in the mirror, tugging at her cape. There wasn’t much she could do that was special – the suit was kind of a one size fits all deal. Jewellery? Bizarre and out of the question. No other accessories someone would usually wear to impress seemed to fit, because Kara wanted Cat to see her – and Supergirl is what she would get.

Looking at Cat’s calendar, still blessedly synched to her work address, Kara felt as if she could hear the blood pulsing through her veins at the reality that she was doing this. That her life would irrevocably change in the next hour.

If Kryptonians could feel nausea, she’s fairly certain she’d be in need of a new super suit right about now.

She looked at the destination in the calendar, noting that for the past weeks Cat had settled in the outskirts of Metropolis. She pushed the destination to the back of her mind, fairly sure that Cat Grant’s temporary apartment in a suburb will be grand enough that Kara could spot it from the sky.

Instead, Kara breathed deeply, walking out to the balcony and pushing off into the sky, stopping on the way to Metropolis, impulsively, foolishly, to clutch at a string of sunflowers she’d seen growing by city hall.

\---

The house looked – well. It was certainly Cat’s, thought Kara, grinning wryly, as she approach the sprawling townhouse. There was an outdoor pool, palm trees which didn’t seem possible in this climate, and probably 8000 square feet of space that Kara wasn’t sure that Cat could justify needing.

Kara touched down on the ground, just inside the front gates. She could buzz, but the idea of Cat turning her away, or the time it would take Cat to respond – no. She couldn’t risk it. Not now, not when she felt that if she gave it three more seconds of thought she’d turn around and never tell Cat, never know for sure.

No. She couldn’t risk that.

She walked up the gravel driveway – what would be an athletic trek for anyone not superhuman, but Kara assumed it was some kind of power play. Some droll comment on whoever was foolish enough to enter this paradise on foot.

And it took ten seconds for paradise to burn in front of her eyes.

“Fuck, _fuck,_ yes,” came the masculine grunt from what Kara assumed was the master bedroom.

Cat Grant wasn’t alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Kara had drunk – she didn’t know how much. Having acute mental faculties was not high on her priority list right now. In fact, the worse they were, the better.

“You look…not good,” Mon-El finished puzzledly, head tiled and looking at Kara’s slumped figure over the bar.

“No talking,” Kara murmured, clicking her fingers and waving haphazardly for another drink.

She had torn away from Cat’s house around an hour ago. Her legs were too shaky to walk but her body held up in the sky, the wind whipping in her face, numbing her to the onslaught of emotion she felt as soon as she touched the ground.

_Too late, too late, too late,_ circled around her head, and she longed to destroy in a way she hadn’t felt for a long time. Rage was a painful bedfellow for her, and it warred with her sadness.

After two drinks, the sadness ebbed. After four drinks, _too late_ became _you never had a shot, Alex was right._

After six drinks, Kara was being propped up by Mon-El outside the bar, feeling unable to handle her own body at that moment.

“I’m going to take you home,” he said gently, but Kara saw the fear in his eyes, the uncertainty at what to do with _this_ Kara Danvers.

“Are you coming with me?” Kara asked plainly, but Mon-El smirked, and Kara recognised her tone as somewhere between drunk and flirty, unintentionally.

_It would be so easy,_ Kara thought. _To be wanted._

But she remembered, even in the haze of her mind, the purse of Cat’s lips – how she would take her bottom lip into her mouth in thought, and how Kara would spend hours distracted, wanting to see it happen again and again.

Cat was beautiful, if not hers. Nothing, no one else, would do.

“Actually, I need to go to my sister’s. I’m good,” Kara re-assured, seeing the sceptical look on Mon-El’s face. “Skin of steel, remember? I’ll be fine and I’ll call you in the morning,” she promised, aware she was reaching the limit of convincing vocabulary in her inebriated state.

Staggering, or the superhero version of it anyway, made Kara’s journey home longer than she would have liked. Not enough to curtail the fuzziness in her brain, but long enough that she had time to think, by herself, without the possibility of passing out in bed.

Once she arrived home, she slipped under sheets, pulling her phone to her chest. She felt reckless, and hopeless, and the combination made her _so tired._ She called up a number she hadn’t remembered to forget yet.

“This is Supergirl.”

\---

It was the third ring which pulled her from sleep. Blindly reaching for her phone, Kara pressed it against her ear, ignoring the throb in her head and her bleary eyes for the time being.

“What, what could it possibly be this early on a Saturday?”

“It’s 11am, Kara, not an unreasonable time to call,” came the sharp voice of Cat Grant, and Kara’s whole body went cold in remembrance. “It’s certainly more reasonable than the 1am _you_ decided to call me.”

“What’s wrong with 1am? Busy, were you?” Kara asked unkindly, and in spite of how much it hurt to hear Cat, she wanted to cry at the idea of getting to hear her speak again.

“Busy sleeping, yes, as most of us humans do at odd hours of the night. I can only assume your non-humanness accounts for the late hour, but I suspect alcohol also played a factor if my voicemail was anything to go by.”

“Non-humanness?”

“For heaven’s sake, Kara, yes – now open this door and explain yourself.”

Kara bolted upright in her bed, squinting her eyes and seeing the poised figure of Cat outside her door.

“You need to go,” Kara replied, still not leaving the cocoon of sheets that felt like her last defence.

“Stop this ridiculousness right now. I’ve deigned to travel here so the least you can do is _open. The. Door_.”

 “Just- just push it okay, it’s likely I didn’t lock it last night,” Kara replied, and the normal shame she’d feel at making a confession of recklessness to Cat didn’t even register under the weight of her emotions.

“What a ridiculously _stupid_ idea, Kara, what were you thinking?”

“Is there something you needed Miss Grant?”

“That’s it? No fanfare? No endless babbling for me to wade through?”

“Seems not, Miss Grant.”

Cat looked at her shrewdly, testing.

“Well, then, perhaps we start with this,” she began, lifting her phone out of her purse, and Kara’s room was suddenly filled with the sound of her voice.

“ _This is Supergirl. I always wanted you to know, always. But I needed to know you were safe and far away from me. Looks like that worked out, huh? I don’t know whether it’s worth saying anymore…whether it’s something that would even cause you to blink. You have all these other worlds that orbit around you and I’m trying to chase your stardust, I…I don’t even know if that makes sense…”_

“There’s another two minutes of silence after that, at which point I stopped listening. So, care to explain why a drunk dial is the way you decided to out yourself as Supergirl and how many others you’re going to have to clear up from.”

“Others?”

“Yes, others,” Cat spoke slowly, as if not trusting Kara to grasp her meaning. “Who knew Supergirl’s big bad secret identity would be outed through the medium that’s the penchant of the drunk and horny? Really, Kara, this is a security risk-“

“There are no others,” Kara cut her off, swallowing against the tight lump in her throat. “I just called you.”

Cat looked curious, and Kara saw the way her eyes focused and shoulders tensed. This was Cat in search of answers.

“Why me, Kara? Why now, of all the times to reveal what was patently obvious, did you do it? Snapper can’t be working you so hard that you feel the need to create your own drama to feel, Kara.”

Kara looked at the woman before her – poised, cutting, _cruel,_ and laughed humourlessly. This was the Cat everyone else saw, everyone told her was the truth. Maybe she’d never seen anything different, really.

And suddenly, abandonment felt so much closer to freedom than she would have believed. Some of the alcohol must have been thrumming through her veins still, because she felt fearless in a way she rarely did in front of Cat Grant. _What else could she lose?_

“I’m in love with you,” Kara said, and it was easier than breathing. “I came to your house-“ here Kara turned quickly to look at Cat, who sat frozen, silent. “And you were… _busy._ So, I drank, and then I called you, because I’m in love with you. And I wanted you to know that, even if that’s selfish of me. You made me Supergirl, and you made me love you without even trying. How pathetic is that?”

There was a long pause – Kara, apathetic, and uncertain about what would become of her relationship with Cat. _What was left of it._ Cat, quiet, and small, and in any other circumstance, Kara would have reached out to her.

“I didn’t know, Kara.”

“Which part?”

“I didn’t know…you love me?”

“Yes,” Kara replied, in a dull tone, picking at the fabric of her pyjama shorts.

“You love me,” Cat repeated in a dumbfounded tone. “I didn’t know, Kara, I didn’t…”

“Look, what difference does it make? I _saw_ you, and you’re clearly not hung up on me or have _any inclination_ to feel the same way, so let’s save ourselves – myself,” she corrected scathingly, “the embarrassment of continuing this conversation. Okay?”

Cat remained quiet in the face of Kara’s anger, so rarely seen, causing Kara to deflate, just wanting this day, this week, month, year, to be over already.

“Please, Cat, _please_ just let me have this. I won’t bother you again, I won’t contact you, but I need this to be over.”

“Kara, I didn’t _know-“_

“Yes, yes, I get it, this is all very new to you but it’s such an old pain to me, Cat, that I can’t talk about it anymore. You don’t love me, I get it, you ju-“

“You don’t get to tell me how to love you Kara!” Cat thundered, cutting Kara off mid-word. “If I love you and want to get _fucked_ by someone else, because for one night I want to sleep and not dream of you, _I will._ You don’t get to decide how I cope, Kara, not when you weren’t brave enough to give me a damn sign that you felt the same way.”

“I said, I don’t want to talk any-“

“Listen to me you _idiot,”_ Cat seethed, stalking up to Kara and jabbing a pointed finger into her chest. “I didn’t _know._ Because you never told me. Because all of these bubbly wonderful feelings have apparently been kept tight for so long that I couldn’t see them. So don’t you berate me for something that is _none of your business,_ because we are not together.”

“I know we’re not-“

“ _Listen,”_ Cat stressed, grasping Kara by the shoulders. “I’m not blind. I still have eyes over CatCo, everywhere. So I know when my assistant is visiting the CEO of another corporation more than the acting CEO of the place where she works. I _know_ when new, handsome, _young_ employees stick around you more than anyone else. I know that, and maybe that makes me want to forget for a little while. So you don’t get to tell me what I do to make myself forget is wrong when you seem to be doing plenty of forgetting, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that I took off to dive. And I haven’t heard from you in months. From what everyone tells me you seem happy, truly happy, and you’re thriving and without CatCo, without you…and I’m not.”

“But…you never called,” Kara said incredulously, looking at Cat’s shining eyes and feeling vertigo at the direction the conversation had taken.

“Did you?” Cat asked rhetorically, both of them knowing the answer. “I thought you were letting me settle in, but then…well, even I know three months is too much of a gap to bridge.”

“Is it?” Kara asked tentatively, feeling emboldened by Cat’s apparent sadness over their loss of contact.

“I did nothing wrong, Kara,” Cat emphasised, and Kara stayed still, making sure to pay attention to the words that were clearly so important to Cat. “You weren’t there. And God, I didn’t know there was a chance that you could be there. So him, he- that’s over now, Kara, but don’t you dare hold that against me.”

Kara breathed deeply, knowing shamefully, how unfair it was to let her jealousy punish Cat like this. “I know. I know, I’m sorry, I just got so _jealous,_ Cat.”

“Because you love me?” Cat questioned, but this time, with a warmness to her eyes that Kara marvelled at her putting it there.

“Because I love you,” Kara breathed, feeling Cat’s hands tighten on her shoulders, as Kara lifted her own hands to Cat’s small waist. “You don’t have to say it back,” Kara rushed on, determined to be fair to Cat and to keep this moment positive. “I don’t need to hear-“

“If you listened to me, idiot,” and the word rung with affection, “you’d know that I already told you I loved you about three minutes ago.”

“You did?” Kara questioned, retracing the conversation in her mind and remembering the words, spoken in anger, as Cat defended herself. “Say it again.”

“Kara, don’t be-“

“Say it again,” Kara repeated firmly, bringing her face closer to Cat’s, a breath away from her lips. “I love you. I’m so in love with you, I’ve only ever loved you. Tell me you love me too.”

“I love you,” Cat replied simply, surely, and Kara wasn’t sure she’d ever heard anything sweeter.

“Welcome home, Cat.”


End file.
